English man goes on road trip the length of $1 billion to demonstrate the difference between $1M and $1B
- A man drove a distance of $1 million vs $1 billion
- He measured the distance of one million $1 bills and one billion
- He used it to show the vast difference between the two numbers
Published on Dec 06, 2024 at 3:42 AM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Dec 06, 2024 at 12:06 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
An English man drove the distance of $1 billion and $1 million to show just how much difference there is between the two figures.
For those of us without billions or millions in the bank, getting your head around the two figures can be a bit confusing.
To make the whole thing a bit clearer, YouTuber Tom Scott decided to conduct a little experiment.
Rather than throw numbers around, Scott decided to use his car to help explain the disparity $1,000,000 and $1,000,000,000.
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He highlighted the difference between $1 million and $1 billion
If the name Tom Scott seems familiar, that’s because he’s the man who previously helped explain the geography behind the road that runs along the US-Canada border and also highlighted this stretch of highway in California that plays music if you drive over it.
And now in his latest video, Scott aimed to show what a huge difference three extra zeros can make.
In the video, Scott decided to measure the distance one million $1 bills would cover, compared to one billion.
Rather than lay the dollar bills flat, Scott instead visualized lying them along their edge – so each dollar bill was around 0.1093mm.
To accurately measure this, he then attached a GPS tracker to a GoPro and set off driving until he’d hit one million.
The difference was pretty shocking
In the case of the one million dollars, Scott had hit the target by the time he walked across the parking lot to his car – around one minute and 25 seconds.
But to hit the one billion dollar mark, he had to travel a lot further. And we do mean a lot.
In the clip, Scott had to drive for a whopping one hour, 15 minutes, and five seconds to get to one billion.
This is more than 50 times the amount of time it took him to get to the million – and he had the advantage of being behind the wheel this time around.
So now you can keep this in mind next time you’re trying to visualize just how rich the world’s richest people actually are.
Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Across her career she's covered a wide variety of topics, including celebrity, cryptocurrency, politics, true crime and just about everything in between.
